I played The Next Promising Soulslike so you don’t have to

I’m a fan of melee oriented games. Anything that emphasizes brutal brawls and flashy martial arts, such as sleeping dogs And SifuIs totally my jam. So I was both curious and excited when my Xbox Series S, the beast that it is, suggested I check out ACE Teams Clash: Artifacts of Chaos. Unfortunately, after about 10 hours of playing this action-adventure soulslike, I left confused and skeptical because of its flawed design and obtuse mechanics. And now I’m wondering if my Xbox even knows me.

Artifacts of Chaos is ACE Team’s third entry in the fighting game series Zeno Clash which made its way to Xbox consoles for the first time in 2009. In this new game, you’ll return to the Zenozoic fantasy world as a pseudo, a martial artist suddenly tasked with protecting some Kuriboh-looking puffball named Boy. This boy is gifted with magical powers that can curse or heal depending on his mood or something else (the story doesn’t fully explain the boy’s powers), making him the object of desire of the tyrannical, many-armed, many-headed Big Bad Gemini and theirs cronies. So similar to 2018 God of War, you go around beating up monstrosities while making sure the boy stays safe in your lanky arms. It’s not the most original narrative, but that’s okay considering how good the combat feels (when it works) and the engrossingly crude visuals on display.

Slapping monsters in their ugly faces

In fact, these two elements – combat and graphics – are the main highlights in Artifacts of Chaos. If you’ve played the first two Zeno Clash games, then you already know the highly saturated, strange world-like aesthetics of the Zenozoic. If not, imagine an interlocking world reminiscent of Team Ninja Wo Long: The Fallen Dynasty (a masterclass in Soulslike game design), which was then lathered liberally in bright yellows and greens, punctuated with bones, rocks, and wooden volumes. Basically, it’s like the developer stuffed the art styles full Earthworm Jim

, crazy maxAnd Oddworld: New and delicious into a blender to see how that would look. And the result is disgusting, but not in a pejorative sense. Artifacts of Chaos, while unimaginative in its storytelling, is utterly unique in its perverted beauty. Characters have deformed faces and limbs. Monsters, creatures resembling a massive bull, have jagged teeth and rotting flesh. The game is so gross you can almost smell the stench of grafted bodies wading in the air as you navigate lush terrain and rocky paths. As someone who has never played Zeno Clash Before, Artifacts of Chaos was an exciting introduction to the Zenozoic society. It didn’t matter that I regularly got lost during my travels. I was too busy absorbing the absurd and surreal views anyway.

Besides sunbathing in the ugliness of the world, Artifacts of Chaos also has some crunchy melee combat. As a third-person brawler who occasionally switches to first-person, the game lets you use a variety of martial arts stances (like Blitz, which focuses on faster punches, or Boxing, which emphasizes powerful hits). and learning moves (like a Shoryuken-style uppercut) to create a unique fighting style. When combat works, it’s stylish and satisfying as you smack enemies right in their ugly faces. You can also do cool fighting game shit, including dodge combos to reset your animations so you can keep the pressure up, or perform special moves that can disrupt your opponent’s attacks. Those moments when you attack your enemy and monitor their movements to find the right time to get in throw some bows, absolute rule, especially if you let her corpse fall off a mountainside like a rag doll. It’s incredibly brutal, making for a challenging but satisfying combat experience as you battle giant troll-like eyesores, terrifying three-legged beasts, and other unspeakable horrors.

This is the dullest Soulslike I’ve ever played

While combat and graphics stand out here, the rest of Artifacts of Chaos‘ package is medium at best and dull at worst. For starters, the map is buried in the game’s rudimentary menus. Also, just showing the names of the locations but not the paths required to get there isn’t as helpful. There’s also no compass or marker, so navigation is more about intuition and memorization than the game leading you to the next location. That might be common for a Soulslike game, but do you know what else is up? Placing nodes on the map to help you get where you want to go. That doesn’t exist here. In addition to the directionless design of the game Artifacts of Chaos ran like total crap on my Series S. It’s no secret that the Series X has the cuter sibling Performance problems, but in the 10 or so hours I put into the game it crashed at least 10 times, stopping me from progressing further in front of a handful of others. This is poorly optimized, with stuttering animations, characters miraculously shooting hundreds of feet into the air, and enough bugs that make Cyberpunk 2077

look competent. It’s a mess of a game marred by a lack of explanations and no real way to relearn the short tutorials that you miss in the heat of battle.

Then you come to the ritual, the “only law” in the world of the game. This little mini is a dice rolling board game initiated at the start of large encountersThe game gives a combat advantage to whoever has the highest score at the end. By placing artifacts and winning the ritual, you can force your opponent to drink a slow-acting poison before the fight begins, make them wear a rotting fish head for humiliation throughout the fight, and the like. The same can happen to you too, so winning is crucial to gain some advantage in the tougher skirmishes, especially when you’re up against two or three gnarly enemies at once. It’s a nice mechanic that becomes completely irrelevant after a few runs as there is a random element (insofar as the number you get after rolling your dice) and the effects don’t make much of a difference because enemies have such massive health pools . You can bypass the ritual entirely to jump right into the melee action, which is what I did after a while. I thought the victories would help me succeed, but in reality they cost me my life. Coupled with the game’s flaws and the opponent’s cheap antics during the ritual – things like destroying my dice and reducing my score – I was stripped of my lanky body and left to explore the spooky night.

Exploring at night is cool but extremely scary

When night falls, Soulslike design really comes full circle. Happens at night when you are either resting in a camp or dying in a fight. See, Pseudo is actually a wooden dummy that’s kind of animated to move and talk. He can equip various body parts in this form, boosting his attack and defense, and now that his skin has been removed, he can traverse thornier paths as well. The world also changes slightly at night, as tougher enemies roam looking for skulls to smash into, and shortcuts open up for easier travel. It’s a bit like that way dying light 2

. It is much more difficult to explore at night.

However, since you’re just a wooden shell with no skin, Pseudo is extremely weak even at night, making the game duller and more dangerous than it already was. And when night has fallen because you died, you are forced to return to where your body was last laid out. Unfortunately, since the map isn’t helpful and only a thin golden pillar of light streams towards the dark sky, showing the approximate location of your body, it’s entirely possible to die again before you even get close to where the the enemy has buried your head . This is one of the most innovative designs that can be implemented in a Soulslike, but it’s pointless as the card doesn’t highlight your dead body. You might wander aimlessly before you ever reach it. And in typical Soulslike fashion, if you die in this wooden form, you lose everything. Your skill points, the weapons you’ve collected, whatever ingredients you’ve collected –all gone because they clung to your flesh.

I like the juxtaposition of day versus night exploration as there is an interesting risk-reward system at play here. Stay out late to gain more experience, but rest until morning to get your skin back. It’s just a shame that so much of the game is buggy to the point of being unplayable. I mean, there were several instances where, after returning to my body, I couldn’t re-enter it no matter how many times I pressed the interact button.

So yes, Clash: Artifacts of Chaos is the dullest Soulslike I’ve played so far. There are some compelling ideas at play here, and I’m in love with the powerful, enjoyable melee combat. It’s just that everything else here isn’t great. ACE Team built a cool exterior with some decent bones. But the lack of polish and the brittle design let the game crumble under its own body weight. I really wanted to like this one, but ultimately I don’t think so Artifacts of Chaos is one you must watch now. Now, excuse me while I’ve been talking for a long time about this recommendation with my Xbox Series S.